IR v3 Feedback

[Demivrgvs]

IR affecting game difficulty

I'm glad to see different players sharing their opinions.

 

IR makes the game harder just because the player loses the tremendous power of a few items that in the vanilla game were formidable and conversely gains (usually) a minor boost on a wider number of items. But this won't remotely compensate the loss.

It's hard to say imo, but personally I feel the opposite.

 

Overall the game might be "harder" for those who relied so much on exploiting Vecna + Improved Alacrity, Staff of the Magi's infinite invisibility, Shield of Cheese's auto-win against beholders (really, why don't they just used ctr-l functions?), etc. but in most cases IR actually offers much more than it "takes away" imo.

 

Random example: IR's Mace of Disruption doesn't disintegrate any undead it touches with almost 100% chance, but it's still almost as effective as before (too much imo), and now you have similar weapons for almost any situation like Harbinger (both anti-summons and anti-demons), Psion's Blade (anti-mind flayers), Bala's Axe, Namarra & Adjatha (anti-spellcasters, divine ones in particular are doomed against Namarra), etc.

 

This brings me back to the "IR makes the game harder/easier". Other players may be better entitled than me (or at least less biased) to answer this dilemma, but my opinion is that IR does not affect the difficulty per se, but it can actually make the game "easier" in terms of building characters/parties of any type because with IR a much higher number of items will suit them regardless of player choices (e.g. they can pick almost any class or weapon proficiency without regretting it because of the lack of appropriate items).

What you need to look at is what the end result of all the changes is: more choices, less useless items and (once KR is out) derelict classes will be more appealing. But does this make the game easier? In my opinion, no. The question is: without IR (and KR) could I create a character that would be more powerful than I could ever have with IR and KR installed? My answer is "yes, undoubtedly".

What I meant is that creating a good character/party is easier because almost every combination is good now. Thus for less experienced players (aka without metagaming) IR makes the game "easier" imo.

 

A vanilla kensai/mage using Vecna and Staff of the Magi is indeed hugely more powerful than the equivalent character when Revisions mods are installed (the SotM alone could make the character completely impossible to target except with AoE spells), but I'm less sure the same thing can be said about a party of 6 characters because in that case IR's vast amount of great items probably catches up with vanilla's more limited number of uber powerful (if not broken) items.

 

IR practically replaces the most powerful items with pale counterparts and in practice it removes them from the game

While the above discussion is arguable, this statement is obviously false.

 

Let's take for example the (in)famous Shield of Balduran Cheese and the Cloak of Mirrorring Cheese:

- in vanilla you could just equip the Shield of Cheese and watch hordes of beholders commit harakiri but even after IR's nerf the shield is still borderline broken because it offers complete immunity to beholder's rays. Afaik without support beholders still don't stand a change against this shield (that's why we made it not available for the Unseeing Eye quest) and only Elder Orbs have valid alternatives to fight a character wearing it (in vanilla even an Elder Orb would have just killed itself by firing a bunch of rays against you).

- similarly the Cloak of Cheese was extremely exploitable, but even in its current state it gives you 50% chance to avoid almost any damaging attack. Actually, the amount of situations where the cloak is useful is hugely superior now because while it gave 100% immunity to damaging spells but 0% against non-magical attacks, now it offers 50% protection from both damaging spells and physical attacks.

 

Which items are so heavily nerfed by IR to feel as if they are removed from the game? o.O

[Salk]

Let's say this: the Robe of Vecna, the Shield of Balduran and the Staff of the Magi are so extremely powerful and effective that they needed to be nerfed heavily. IR removes their original powers and offers replacements that could not be on the same level or else why even bother? You speak of exploitations and you state that one of IR's goals is to eliminate that: exploitations do make the game much easier and you are actively removing them as the best of your ability. Just to make it clear: I completely agree and support this. But how could you not believe that by doing so the game becomes harder? I feel there is a contradiction here.

 

I just speak for my personal experience with IR. To me, it generally makes the game harder. And with this I mean, I have more problems surviving battles with IR installed than without.

[kreso]

About OP vanilla items : I think many players didn't use it, even before the first IR release..

And for a long time, SCS offer some components to remove cheesy items and/or make them avaible at the very end of the game.

Flail of Ages, Foebane, SoTM (even without Invisibility- that I actually find balanced if you don't abuse it to cancel targeted spells - do you need a 17th level mage to be invisible? LoL....I'd rather have Anomen under constant invisibility than Edwin.), Ravager, Unyielding Axe in their vanilla incarnation are all far more powerful than any IR weapon - there's really no comparison between them - just look at their vanilla abilities; Foebane (such an underrated weapon) makes you virtually immortal (up to 400HP or more with 2 whirlwinds). SoTM has "dispel per hit", no save, and a freakin Spell Trap.

Flail - no save slow, and overall the best in-game weapon imo. Final version adds Free Action, as if the effects aren't imba already.

Ravager - 10% no save instakill.

Does a single IR weapon do anything even comperable to this nonsense?

Sure, IR does make some weapons better - but in vanilla, why would you even consider using them when you can have these?

Sorry, but if I killed Abazigal, I am forging FoA +5 and using it, same as SotM after Twisted Rune.

 

While I agree that AC is more relevant with IR, I actually think that is a good thing.

 

You imply that, in order to evaluate the increase or decrease in difficulty using IR, we should take as base parameter a game where the most powerful items are removed

This. You can say that you don't buy Vecna, use Dispel Arrows, use Carsomyr, Cloak of Cheese, Cloak of Reflection, Balduran Shield, FoA, Ravager etc. but that all exists in BG2... Same could be said for IR - you won't use shield tweak (I find it a welcome change that shields are useful besides Harmony/Balduran/Reflection), damage resistance tweak, or any item you find OP by your standards.

 

IR practically replaces the most powerful items with pale counterparts and in practice it removes them from the game

And this. I wouldn't exactly say "pale counterparts" (Cloak of Mirroring is still very powerful, just becomes useful even against non-spellcasters for example) but the general point is valid.

I agree that in general, all weapon types are balanced within IR. Underpowered are made better, but scaling down the most OP weapons (noted above) increases the game difficulty. Besides, how many powerful weapons do you need? Even 2 items from above list are a complete overkill.

 

For potions - yes, they cannot be dispelled. Some effects can be breached, however. And they generally last much shorter.

[DavidW]

Overall the game might be "harder" for those who relied so much on exploiting Vecna + Improved Alacrity, Staff of the Magi's infinite invisibility, Shield of Cheese's auto-win against beholders (really, why don't they just used ctr-l functions?),

Immersion, surely. CTRL-Y is an explicit and clear out-of-game action. Buying a legally available magic item in a store and using it feels very different.

 

The first time I played BG2 I stormed through the beholder lair with the Shield of Balduran. It felt great! And I turned Imoen into an engine of destruction via Vecna+IA. It felt awesome! But even so, I found plenty of the combats quite challenging (not so in ToB, mostly, to be fair) because I was an absolute novice at the game.

 

Of course, on subsequent playthroughs things feel very different, due to the combination of increased familiarity with the game (so that encounters become easier) and increased familiarity with the plot (so that you're less inclined to forgive quick-and-easy combat encounters that let you see what happens next).

[Ardanis]

I've a suggestion. We still have some of the bonus merchants items unaffected by IR, and we keep them all to the Joluv's store, available for everyone who cares to buy them.

 

Why don't we in fact make those items fit the niche they were supposed to? Up them to 3-5 enchantment with powerful abilities and reasonable price (15-30 per item). Not wasting much time on balancing those or anything - since they're going to take over the role of vanilla SotM, FoA, Vecna etc.

 

With the BGII:EE coming out soon, we may as well forsake the remaining items in vanilla BGII and focus on the enhanced edition if needs be. This will render Joluv's current store unused by IR, so we can give its stuff some purpose after all.

[kreso]

Just for note, my experience with a BGT playthrough is the same as Salk's - IR and SR do make the game (SCS modded at least) harder, not easier. There are some parts which IR can make easier (it does have several very convinient items), but the whole run is indeed harder.

 

And those (combat) experts will give you feedback based on what they feel the game should be for them to be challenging. Building a mod based on their vision (which more or less usually matches your own) can only end in making the game more difficult, even without AI enhancing modifications because that's how they want it.

This is an exellent point...I never tought about it this way.

[Demivrgvs]

IR affecting game difficulty

Well, what can I say, it sounds like I stand corrected. Perhaps my main fault was assuming that exploiting Vecna, SotM, Shield of Balduran and similar items wasn't such an integral part of playing BG for a "normal" player, but even the smaller nerfs to "OP but not broken" items such as FoA seem to play a bigger role than I expected.

 

Bonus Merchants

I've a suggestion. We still have some of the bonus merchants items unaffected by IR, and we keep them all to the Joluv's store, available for everyone who cares to buy them.

 

Why don't we in fact make those items fit the niche they were supposed to? Up them to 3-5 enchantment with powerful abilities and reasonable price (15-30 per item). Not wasting much time on balancing those or anything - since they're going to take over the role of vanilla SotM, FoA, Vecna etc.

No please, don't ask something like this to me. I do accept a similar but balanced approach such as what we did by allowing players to conveniently get their hands on the Shield of Mirror and Psion's Blade right before facing UD's beholders and mind flayers, but I'm strongly against the idea of having uber OP items within IR, regardless of their price.

 

Anyway, in their current state, most of bonus merchant's items don't have neither their own icon (this is a crucial requisite imo) nor a decent lore, thus even assuming I wanted to use those items my hands are tied. This is pretty much the same reason BGEE items are on hold.

 

With the BGII:EE coming out soon, we may as well forsake the remaining items in vanilla BGII and focus on the enhanced edition if needs be. This will render Joluv's current store unused by IR, so we can give its stuff some purpose after all.

Eh? Now I'm not sure I got your idea right...Joluv would not be used by IR? Didn't you suggested to make him gather a bunch of OP weapons? o.O

 

@Arda, speaking of BG2EE, I trust you and aVENGER but I seriously hope you guys did not added too many items because the amount of magical equipment in BG is already beyond absurd levels.

[Kilgor]

I just wanna say i love all the changes to the different items.

OP items like Flail of Ages has been nerfed(I still use the new one), so it makes the game a bit more challenging and there are more variation between item choices.

 

Please don't start buffing items that are already viable to use.

[khelban12]

I just wanna say i love all the changes to the different items.

OP items like Flail of Ages has been nerfed(I still use the new one), so it makes the game a bit more challenging and there are more variation between item choices.

 

Please don't start buffing items that are already viable to use.

+1

 

I too love the changes. Finally all weapons give you some reason to use them instead of always using the same 4-5 vanilla weapons.

 

I agree that novice users do not tend to give feedback about mods and only experienced users do. So based on the feedback of these veterans that find every battle easy, many mods increase the difficulty to a point that novice users cannot play the game with some X mod installed. However, i do not believe IR falls in this category and i do not think IR increases the difficulty.

 

I am not the kind of veteran player that can solo SCSII improved Demogorgon on insane (in fact every time i tried to use scsii my solo chars die on almost any SCSII battle). So if you want feedback of an intermediate player, i say the IR changes make sense and make the game better.

 

IR makes the game harder just because the player loses the tremendous power of a few items that in the vanilla game were formidable and conversely gains (usually) a minor boost on a wider number of items. But this won't remotely compensate the loss.

Technically i agree. Without IR the player is able to make some battles a walk in the park (e.g Balduran Shield vs Beholders) and with IR he isn't so technically we could say the difficulty is greater.

 

Practically, however, unless you relied on these conveniences / exploits, the game does not become any harder. As i said, i am not the best player and my IR playthrough went as smoothly as my non-IR ones. The game was also more fun because i don't just sit and watch beholders get killed by themselves. I know nobody forces me to use the shield but before IR i usually did just because i could. Also when i play as sorcerer, of course i love to use Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, Imp Alacrity and unleash a crapload of Skull Traps as much as the next guy but i appreciate the changes IR did. I think it makes the game more realistic (if i am permitted to use such a word for a fantasy game).

 

I know very few things about modding so my opinion doesn't hold much weight, but i believe IR is a great mod and makes BG2 an even better experience.

 

Shield of Balduran, Robe of Vecna, Arrow of Dispelling... All those items are extremely powerful and useful in the vanilla game. So much that people like you feel that "standard gameplay" should be without it. But they are there in the original game for the player to use! Vanilla game is the reference, not your or anybody else's gaming style.

 

Maybe there could be an optional component that would restore the vanilla behavior of only these 3-4 cheesy items. This way anyone who shares the author's view can keep the current IR behavior and anyone who wants the powerful vanilla behavior he also can have it without resorting to commenting lines in the tp2.

[Salk]

First of all, I want to sweep any doubts about any lack of appreciation of the IR mod on my side. I have followed its development from the beginning and gave feedback before and after releases. If I didn't think IR was a very good mod, I'd never participated so actively in this forum, trying to give a little contribution in terms of ideas.

 

Even if might not agree 100% on each change made by IR, the percentage is pretty close to it and I support the decision of limiting the extreme power of a few items. Said that:

 

I too love the changes. Finally all weapons give you some reason to use them instead of always using the same 4-5 vanilla weapons.

 

And here I cannot but agree 100%!

 

I agree that novice users do not tend to give feedback about mods and only experienced users do. So based on the feedback of these veterans that find every battle easy, many mods increase the difficulty to a point that novice users cannot play the game with some X mod installed. However, i do not believe IR falls in this category and i do not think IR increases the difficulty.

 

This statement lacks motivation, especially considering that you agree with the premise, unless you imply that I meant to say that IR increases the difficulty to "a point that novice users cannot play the game", which is not true, of course. I speak of a moderate increment in difficulty and I also mentioned that it's in general terms.

 

I am not the kind of veteran player that can solo SCSII improved Demogorgon on insane (in fact every time i tried to use scsii my solo chars die on almost any SCSII battle). So if you want feedback of an intermediate player, i say the IR changes make sense and make the game better.

 

I am not a veteran either. I have good experience with BG1 but far less with BG2 / ToB.

 

Technically i agree. Without IR the player is able to make some battles a walk in the park (e.g Balduran Shield vs Beholders) and with IR he isn't so technically we could say the difficulty is greater.

 

Practically, however, unless you relied on these conveniences / exploits, the game does not become any harder.

 

Here I fear I have problems making myself understood because not only you, but also DrAzTiK and Demivrgvs himself come with the same objection. What does "unless you relied on these conveniences / exploits" mean really? Those items are as legit to use as a plain, non enchanted item in the game. You cannot discount their presence by marking them as unfit. When you speak about difference in difficulty, those items (all of them!) must be considered too.

 

i appreciate the changes IR did. I think it makes the game more realistic (if i am permitted to use such a word for a fantasy game).

 

And here I agree completely again.

 

Maybe there could be an optional component that would restore the vanilla behavior of only these 3-4 cheesy items. This way anyone who shares the author's view can keep the current IR behavior and anyone who wants the powerful vanilla behavior he also can have it without resorting to commenting lines in the tp2.

 

I understand Demivrgvs' reluctance about such a thing. It'd go against IR's philosophy and I personally would not install that component.

 

What I wanted to say is simply that IR could have made the revised items slightly more powerful to compensate the formidable power loss of those so-called "cheesy items". In that way, the "natural" challenge would practically be unaltered.

[khelban12]

First of all, I want to sweep any doubts about any lack of appreciation of the IR mod on my side. I have followed its development from the beginning and gave feedback before and after releases. If I didn't think IR was a very good mod, I'd never participated so actively in this forum, trying to give a little contribution in terms of ideas.

I have read many of your posts over the years and i know you have contributed much. I never implied that you were bashing IR and saying its not good.

 

This statement lacks motivation, especially considering that you agree with the premise, unless you imply that I meant to say that IR increases the difficulty to "a point that novice users cannot play the game", which is not true, of course. I speak of a moderate increment in difficulty and I also mentioned that it's in general terms.

I am sorry if i offended you. I didn't imply anything about you. This was a personal opinion / observation of mine that while i find many mods quite difficult, it didn't happen with IR.

[Salk]

I am sorry if i offended you. I didn't imply anything about you. This was a personal opinion / observation of mine that while i find many mods quite difficult, it didn't happen with IR.

 

I was not offended in the least. On the contrary, I found your message very polite.

[Salk]

BG2:EE is out and there's been very little activity in this and SR's forums.

 

Hopefully there will be another renaissance sooner rather than later for both IR and SR.

[Demivrgvs]

BG2:EE is out and there's been very little activity in this and SR's forums. Hopefully there will be another renaissance sooner rather than later for both IR and SR.

I hope so myself, I still have great plans for Revisions mods. Btw, I'm flying below radar but I'm still here. As soon as Arda manages to find some time for us we'll be back with a bang.

[Kalindor]

KR is my personal favorite. I hope you are planning on taking advantage of the various externalizations in the new EE versions. If you need anything tested, shoot me a PM. I don't have BG2:EE yet but would love an excuse to buy it, heh heh.